The world gives lecture on climate but if we tell them that we want the necessary fuel for nuclear energy to move forward, they refuse, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday hit out at developed
Entrepreneurs and NGOs find innovative models to take solar energy to rural homes in the country. As dusk slowly lapses into night, it is time for millions to call it a day. For, before the night falls, farmers with their cattle have to be at home, children have to finish studies, housewives have to finish the household chores, as life comes to a standstill once it is dark.
DOWN TO EARTH Sunita Narain / New Delhi February 26, 2008 It was the mid-1980s, environmentalist Anil Agarwal was on a mission: to track down the person who had conceptualised the employment guarantee scheme in Maharashtra. His hunt (I tagged along) led him to a dusty, file-paper filled office in the secretariat. There we met V S Page. I remember a diminutive, soft-spoken man, who explained to us why in 1972 when the state was hit with crippling drought and mass migration of people, it had worked on a scheme under which professionals working in cities would pay for employment in villages.
Billed as a green fuel breakthrough in the aviation sector, the world's first flight by a commercial airline partly powered by biofuel touched down in Amsterdam today after a three-hour journey from Heathrow airport here. Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent biofuel tank that it said would provide 20 per cent of the engine's power. The flight did not carry passengers. According to Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, using technology to develop greener fuel options will not only lower emissions but will also allow for other global warming issues to be tackled. "It's not necessarily going to be the silver bullet for the long-term future but it will prove that a fuel like this can fly at 30,000 feet,' he was quoted as saying by BBC. "The demonstration flight will give us crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint,' he said. The biofuel was derived from a mixture of babassu nuts and coconuts. The three other engines were capable of powering the plane on conventional fuel had there been a problem. Earlier this month, Airbus used the world's largest passenger jet, the A380, to test another alternative fuel
An 18-month to two-year delay is expected in the Mumbai airport slum rehabilitation programme to find alternative land to relocate and resettle approximately 80,000 slum-dwellers, who have encroached on 276 acres of airport land. The delay will seriously impact the expansion and modernisation of the country's second-busiest airport. The GVK-led consortium, which is modernising the airport, had appointed Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL) to work out a slum resettlement programme to identify alternative land and relocate people in four phases. Once free, this airport land was to be used to augment the runway system and, therefore, increase the airport's ability to handle more passengers. The first phase of the slum resettlement was to be completed in 18 months with a deadline of April 2009 and the second phase by October 2009. The target date for the final phase was October 2011. But HDIL's managing director, Sarang Wadhawan, told Business Standard: "It will be at least two-and-a-half years before the first slum-dweller is shifted.' What this means is that the relocation of slum dwellers even of the first phase can only begin only in late 2010. The delay is chiefly because HDIL is keen to take all stakeholders, especially the local administration, on board its plans. The company has asked for time to make a presentation on the programme. "It is important to take the corporators, councillors and NGOs into confidence,' said Wadhawan. The slum rehab policy demands that at least 70 per cent of the affected dwellers give the developer consent to move. The survey work to identify the exact number of slum -dwellers is yet to begin but the company said it had already identified the land for slum resettlement from its land reserves. It has earmarked 147.5 acres, nearly 6 per cent of its vast land bank in the city, for the project. Under regulations, the relocation has to take place around the airport and each family, irrespective of size, is to be given a dwelling of 225 sq foot.
With the government planning to start 20 per cent blending of bio-diesel with diesel, Indian oil companies are fast firming up their bio-diesel ventures. The state-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), for instance, is slated to announce a joint venture with the Government of Chattisgarh shortly to take up large scale jatropha farming across 36,000 hectares. Oil extracted from seeds of jatropha plant
The report of the latest tiger census, which shows the existence of no more than 1,411 wild cats, justifies the fear that tiger conservation efforts are not paying off. Indeed, the current tiger count is lower than the tiger population of 1,827 in 1972, when the Wildlife Protection Act was enacted to pave the way for the launch of Project Tiger, designed to conserve and propagate what was seen 36 years ago as a threatened species. Undeniably, Project Tiger did show good results initially, with the tiger head count rising to a handsome 3,000 by 1979, but it began flagging subsequently, leading to not only the negation of the initial gains but to the re-emergence of fears about the continued existence of tigers in the country's wild areas. The latest census is based on the globally adopted method of supplementing the pug-mark count with evidence collected through camera traps, remote sensing and various robust statistical tools. It has, consequently, made several revelations which are dismaying. For one, it has confirmed that the 2002 tiger count, which had put the number at a high of around 3,500, was a bogus exercise, meant chiefly to cover up lapses on the tiger conservation front and counter reports of widespread poaching activity. The bulk of the remaining tiger population is now confined to a few reserved sanctuaries, the notable among them being the Corbett Park in Uttaranchal, Nagarhole in Karnataka, Kanha and Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh, and Kaziranga in Assam. Most other tiger reserves have reported a sharp drop in tiger numbers. Some of the key ones among them are Ranthambore and Sariska in Rajasthan, Palamau in Jharkhand, Nagarjun Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh and Indravati in Chhattisgarh. But this needs to be viewed against the backdrop of the fact that, barring Ranthambore and Sariska, the other three poorly-performing habitats are hotspots of Naxal activity and the decline in the tiger population there could, therefore, be for reasons different from those prevailing in other wildlife habitats that have witnessed a slide. The lack of success in tiger conservation is attributable largely to complacency. This is reflected in the large number of posts of forest guards and rangers which have been lying vacant for years on end, as also in the paucity of the resources required for protecting reserve forests. Most of the forest officers who are in place do not have fast-moving vehicles, modern communication tools and weapons, all of which are required to counter the better-equipped poachers. That the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, set up last year to supervise the forests, has not yet become effectively operational is another indication of the apathy towards this task. Commonplace issues like re-location of human habitations from the wildlife sanctuaries and curbing other non-forestry activities there have also not been suitably addressed. In the absence of a suitable policy framework, even the fringe areas around the forests have not been able to serve as effective buffer zones. Under the given circumstances, it seems far better to concentrate resources and efforts on selected habitats that have tiger populations large enough for quicker breeding and propagation than spreading them thinly over wider tracts, as is being done today. Besides, the trade and, more importantly, the exporters of tiger parts need to be curbed effectively to take away the incentive for poaching on tigers.
In contemporary parlance, SEBs remain deeply subprime. Several initiatives in the power sector are supposedly on the anvil. First, a Rs 100,000 crore National Electricity Fund (NEF) has been reportedly proposed by a committee. Ostensibly the objective is to provide loans to those state electricity boards and, presumably, their successor unbundled entities comprising transmission and distribution companies that cannot otherwise borrow from normal channels, like banks. The money will be borrowed for the benefit of state electricity boards (SEBs) by government-owned specialised financial intermediaries, specifically, Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) with the help of fiscal sops and concessions (and implicitly government backing given the origins of these entities). Second, the possible extension of the tax holiday for new power projects (including mega ones) from 2010 to 2017 since projects that have been awarded recently are unlikely to begin operations on time to benefit within the current deadline. Third, a revamped Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme (APDRP) to induce reduction in aggregate technical and commercial (ATC) losses may be introduced, whereby states are financially rewarded if losses decline to a target level, say, 15 per cent. The serious "new' money is the NEF, if it comes about. The proposed initiatives are hardly original, they are devoid of conviction (since we are close to elections), and they are largely an admission of failure. Since the beginning of the decade, this will be the second instance of a major central government financial intervention in the electricity sector. It may be recalled that in 2001, unpaid dues (including interest and penalties) of SEBs to central public sector units (CPSUs) and Indian Railways had reached Rs 41,500 crore (about 2 per cent of 2000/01 GDP); the sector was on the verge of a default crisis, which would have taken CPSUs down, financially. The way out, in a manner of speaking, entailed securitising Rs 35,000 crore through bonds
India has performed poorly in international patent filings last year compared to its neighbour China, according to data released by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Filing patent applications under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) enables companies to secure patent protection in various countries. It is a measure for a knowledge-based economy and a barometer of the spread of innovation-based companies in each country. In the global race for knowledge-based industries, WIPO's data clearly suggest that India is far behind China. India, for example, filed only 686 applications last year to secure patent protection in countries that are members of the PCT compared to 831 in 2006. In the same period China's patent applications grew 38.1 per cent to reach an all-time high 5,456. China's impressive growth in its innovation-based companies enabled the Middle Kingdom to occupy seventh place in the world's top 15 countries. "We expect India to grow rapidly in life-sciences research, but at this juncture its considerable research and development activity has not translated into patent filings,' said Francis Gurry, deputy-director general at WIPO overseeing the PCT work. The stark differences between these two big economies are due to the underlying differences in their overall economic activity. While software and services dominate the Indian economy, new manufacturing activities are at the centre of the Chinese miracle, Gurry said. Until now, the industrialised countries
Tata Motors' Nano
The Biotechnology Industry Association (BIA), the representative body of international biotech product makers, has expressed concern over the patent criteria norms prescribed under the Indian Patent Act. In a representation to the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) on February 11, the association has demanded that India be kept under the priority watch list of USTR due to inadequate intellectual property (IP) compliance.
